


Je Me Souviens

by auselysium



Series: Dreammaking and Strange Remembrance [2]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: 1st person, M/M, Oliver's POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-09 09:49:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13478889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auselysium/pseuds/auselysium
Summary: Oliver's point of view for my story Dreammaking and Strange Remembrance, which picks up from the end of the book and sees Elio and Oliver a 2nd chance.  Won't really make any sense unless you've read that!





	1. Je Me Souviens

**Author's Note:**

> This came from an anon request on Tumblr to hear this story from Oliver's POV. It's mostly a writing challenge for myself, to get things written and out quickly while I brain storm and plan for my next big fic - which is going to be a big one! Chapters will be posted as I finish them. Will vary in length and depth. Thank you for reading!

_ In grammar, a reflexive verb is, loosely, a verb whose direct object is the same as its subject, for example, "Je me souviens".   _

_ I remember myself. _

_ *** _

It shouldn’t feel like home, but it does.  It has nothing to do with familiarity or longevity, simply the feeling it gives me.

New York should feel like home, the place I lived for nearly eight years.  Where I had my first job, got married.

Or that small New England town where my parents still live in the same house I’d grown up in, an excitable boy always running around with scraped elbows and grass stains on his pants.

Or the house with the long driveway, where deer visit the backyard on winter mornings.  Where I’d rocked my babies through sleepless nights and watched them grow into young men who make me so very proud.  Where I’d shared a life with someone, even if she doesn’t want to anymore.  

That should be home.

But it’s this place.  It’s always been this place, with it’s sun-bleached plaster walls and orchards of low lying fruit.  The family that had taken me in and spoken to me like one of their own.  It holds so many memories of myself, the optimism I’d held against my skin for the life that lay before me.  

The summer I’d loved Elio, I’d found a love for myself too and that remembered me has caught fire again upon my return to B.  

I hadn’t been struck so soundly by this sense of belonging the last time I’d been here.  And the reason why - which had left a glaringly obvious hole I tried to look away from the last time I’d set foot here - floats across from me in the sea, the moonlight doing amazing things to the water droplets clinging to his cheekbones.

He’s still so ethereally beautiful, even after all these years, his dark curls slicked back with salt-water.  Careless, as if age cannot touch him.  I wonder if he thinks the same of me, or if he sees the papery skin of my hands, the intermittent grey at my temples, like I do.

He is the same Elio, the one I knew and loved so very many years ago. Which only proves to me what I’d hoped was true then: we’d given our most complete selves to each other.  And that is a gift that cannot be returned or re-given.  

It was only time, in the end.  A condition of life, not a force for destruction.  And I want more.

“This doesn’t have to be good bye,” I say, after I offer to come visit him in New York. “At least not in the way you’re thinking.”

My heart dances dangerously in my rib cage and I’m more aware of it than I have been in years.  

I don’t wait to see what he says, too afraid he’ll disagree.  Maybe he sees the scope of those 20 years as something insurmountable but then I hear his bare feet on the grass, hurrying to catch up with me.  We walk in lock-step, our long legs carrying us over the threshold of the house, the terracotta floor cool and smooth.  I lead us up the steps to the landing of our connected rooms and wonder if I reached back for him if he’d take my hand.

“Good night, Elio,” I say.  

He smiles back at me, toothy and crooked, like the joy of it has taken him by surprise.  “Night.

I crawl into the bed that had been ours and sleep, the water from the bay still drying on my skin.

  
  
  
  
  



	2. Tu Me Manques

_ There is no direct translation from English to French of "I miss you." The closest translation is in fact "Tu me manque," but translated back to English it means "You are missing from me." _

***

The last time I’d heard him play had been at that all night cafe in Rome. We’d both been drunk and he’d played Brahms before switching to some Neapolitan drinking songs.  Such a showman, playing to the crowd.

Tonight, on the well-lit stage, the work had been more delicate, just piano and strings, and he had performed like a master.  Composed, restrained, nuanced.  His talents and tone developed so beautifully after his years of training.

I settle back in my seat after the standing ovation and cover my stupid smile with both my hands.  It’s intermission now, but I don’t bother leaving.  I sit through the second half of the program, Tchaikovsky Serenade, but I barely hear it, instead replaying ever moment of Elio's performance in my mind.

Elio’s musical abilities had always amazed me, not just the technique but the way he could morph the notes, stealing bits of style from others and make it his own.  I could watch him play for hours, his body bending, like he was becoming the melody.  

His artistry was something I myself had never even attempted.  Sports and good grades, that was what was going to get me a scholarship to college, so my father said.  So that is what I’d done, leaving what I'd always been told was a naturally good ear untrained.

He’s surrounded at the stage door, so I hang back and watch him give a different kind of performance.  Shaking hands, making small talk.  He’s good at this, too.

I’ve followed his career; it was impossible not to.  There was even a time, only a year or two after his intermittent letters had stopped coming (and Vimini’s had stopped cold) and I’d just become a father for the second time and was feeling trapped and emasculated, where I’d looked up his performance schedule.  I had made up some excuse to Angie about needing to go to New York.  

I just wanted to see him.

I wrestled, then. Should I tell him I was coming?  Or did I want our eyes to meet from over the top of the piano in the small theatre and have his playing stumble as he realized I was there?  What if he found me in the lobby after?  What if he asked me to stay?

At the last minute I’d chickened out, unsure of my true motivation for going.   There had been too many ‘what if’s’ to risk it.  

There are ‘what if’s’ tonight, too.  Which is why when he asks if I’d like to stay for the reception, I come ready prepared with a need to get back due a class the next morning and an hour drive home.

He’s disappointed and I realize then that I am too.  

“I hope we can meet up again soon,” He says, his eyes flitting between the door I’ll soon leave through and the reception where he knows he’s expected.

“Let’s plan on it.”

That’s good enough, I think.  The reassurance without the pressure of actual plans.

He moves towards me and I can’t help but notice the loose way his arm comes around my waist, as if he’s hoping to pull me into a slow dance and not a goodbye.  My hands luxuriate, simply because they know no other way.  Feeling their way across his back, those muscles and bones I’d known so well.

I exhale slowly, emptying my lungs so I have none left for words I might regret. Words like ‘I’ll hold the memories of this night just as dearly as our night in Rome.  How did I not realize you have been missing from me this entire time?’

Or worse.

But then I feel it, the wet-warm pressure of his lips against the skin of my neck just above the collar of my coat.  One more second and I will have his jaw in my hand, his lips on my mouth and I wouldn’t care that there are still other concert goes in the lobby or that the divorce papers only just came back last week.  All I’d care about is having him, and me along with him, again.

I step away, my movements erratic. Panicked.  “Thanks for the tickets, Elio.  I’ll see you soon.  Enjoy the rest of your successes tonight.”

I wake to an email, just one line, apologizing for the kiss.  I’m reminded of another note, left under my door in B., and just like that note had then, this one leaves a smile on my face that lasts so long my cheeks start to hurt.


	3. Ich habe Mich in Dich Verliebt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I press past his lips now as I mutter secret fantasies from years past about breaking wedding vows. His tongue tip laves the cleft between my middle and forefinger, his eyes locked on mine leaving no doubt to his insinuations. It’s in the middle of the day in a public place, I’m hard as hell and I love every shameless moment of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oliver's POV during the bookstore scene.

_ Verlieben, verb (reflexive) _ _  
_ _ to fall in love _

_ (first-person singular present perfect “ich habe mich in dich verliebt” Translation: I have fallen in love with you.) _ __  
  


Only Elio could make me this brazen.  

I’m 44, a father, an ex-husband and yet I may as well be 24 again, young and carefree, my body on fire by a berm in Italy as I touch him for the first time.  He had made me bold then - asking him to call me by his own name, tasting his peach, the unabashed acts in the bathroom in Rome.  I’d done things, wanted things, with him that I’ve never dared act on, before or since.

I press past his lips now as I mutter secret fantasies from years past about breaking wedding vows. His tongue tip laves the cleft between my middle and forefinger, his eyes locked on mine leaving no doubt to his insinuations. It’s in the middle of the day in a public place, I’m hard as hell and I love every shameless moment of it.  

Our breath is loud and close and for as unevenly as it breaks from my chest, it’s nearly in sync with his. His hand has found its way beneath my overcoat, pressing against my waist where my sweater breaks over the waist of my trousers as if all he’s seeking is my skin and my heat.

If he asked me back to his place, I’d say yes in a heartbeat.  I’d press him back against the stacks and fall to my knees this second, if I could.  

“This is getting…”  I murmur.

“It is, yeah...” he replies stepping away.  If he mutters an apology I think I’ll cry.  But he doesn’t.  Instead he puts the book about Monet back onto its shelf, and I catch him adjusting himself in his pants.  I snicker and he looks back.  “What?”  He says, it’s short and peevish, but good humoured, too with a hint of a smirk.

“You need a stiff drink or something?” I tease.

“Cold shower might be better.”

We get coffee instead.

The frisson diffuses but doesn’t go away completely, leaving an undercurrent of unfinished business that means we press our legs next to each other in the cab, that our eyes linger mischievously whenever they meet.

He meets my son. Shakes his hand. The pair of them chat easily about life in New York and college and higher education, I realize it’s not just that I crave him, I’ve fallen in love with him, too.  Not again but not for the first time, either.  They’ve always gone hand in hand where Elio is involved, wanting and cherishing.  Perhaps I’d fallen in love all those years ago and never stopped, only forgotten what it felt like to have my soul met and seen and meshed with another.

I want everything.  Lunches masquerading as dates, long walks through a familiar city, his presence in every aspect of my family life, moments of undeniable lust that sneak up on us and take over. I want to be with him in a way he had been too young for and I had been too afraid of before.  

When we say goodbye that night, after a dinner that had probably felt interminable to Adam, but too short for me, and he places his hand on the same corner of waist and hip, his thumb sweeping and insistent against the fabric I can only hope he’s as ready and willing to jump in with both feet as I am.

Something tells me he just might be.


	4. Baciami

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again, happy ending! This when they first sleep together in France.
> 
> So this one is a bit short and a bit smutty. (Only a bit!) Also a bit...un-Oliver?? I dunno.

_Baciami_ \- _Ital.; compound imperative of_ _baciare_ \- _to kiss and_ _mi_ \- me.

He’s grieving, perhaps the most irrational, persistent and erratic of all human emotions.  And Elio has had it in spades. His parents. His partner. Maybe me? (Or is that just my own conceit, my own grief at having lost him two decades ago, that adds me to that list?)  

He’s demanded this act of me, physical and emotional and beautiful, that I’ve been pining for since that afternoon at the bookstore.  Since he came to visit my lecture. Since the first moment I’d first sat across from him at the breakfast table in the Italian morning sunshine, a bitten-into apricot balanced in his long fingers.

I couldn’t say ‘no’ to him, even if I wished I could have said ‘later’. But I don’t want him to feel this as pity.  And I can’t bare for him to think of me as just anyone, a warm body to fill the void.

It’s not the how, it’s the why, not that what but the when that has me most concerned.

“Kiss me,” he orders.  It is as if he can not bare to have my lips anywhere else but on his.  Even as I moved inside him, his knees around my waist, our bodies falling in to a short-lived but ecstatic rhythm, he seeks out that connection.  Mouth to mouth. Tongue to tongue. Breath to breath.

I sense his shame in the morning, like he’s let me down.  An added layer he does not need. Not when our consummation, for all it’s jet-lagged, emotionally fraught distraction, has filled me with a glowing certainty that I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.  And then Elio wishes me no place else, too.

I fill the day will small touches, quiet support.  We walk through tall grass. Stare out at the far away sea.  He returns the gentless with the the warm water of a shower, a soft scrape of a razor against my jaw, the high-pitched noises he makes as he sucks me off.

I consider the tense very carefully as I say, “I loved you, Elio.”  Knowing he’s not quite ready to hear it crouched in any other time frame but the past.  I offer him my celibate confession as proof of just how much I’d been willing to sacrifice for him.  I curl my body towards his, just so, commanding my own reparations for the recklessness of the night previous.

He reads me, smiling.  Gives so much I can barely breath.  It’s been so long since since I’ve been with a man in the way I’m asking.  Elio, having been the last. The unnerving but welcome pressure of him inside me is almost more than my blood can bare.  

But Elio undoes me with perfection.  Patient and involved. What a beautiful lover he has become for me.

I feel none of his grief.  I give him no pity. He knows me, seeming to remember just how and and where and when to touch.  

"Thank you," he says as we lay naked together after, the day outside our open window fading to night.

"What for?"  I ask.

He pulls me tighter, I kiss his dampened curls.  "Everything."

It would seem we have a knack for getting things right the second time around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And yeah, I'm totally cribbing from Aciman. "If you can't say 'yes' don't say 'no' say 'later'." I love that line.


	5. Gemutlichkeit

_Gemutlichkeit_ noun. German; a feeling of coziness, contentedness, comfort and relaxation coming from a deep sense of belonging and well-being springing from social acceptance

*

I’m home.

Not in the grim Robert Frost way, a place of compulsory refuge.  But where you feel most at ease. The place you hope that life will continually return you to.  Where you wish to find rest, stillness from time and travel.

Home is where you unpack your things.  Place pictures on mantles and hang up all your clothes, even the ones you haven’t worn in years that simply take up space in the back of your closet.  It is where you let dust collect along with memories.

Home is where you speak of things happening there in the future.  Make plans and follow through.

This morning Elio had lain in bed long after we’d kissed the day awake, his eyes settled on the trees swaying lightly through the window beyond, lost in thought.  Yet he is still walking around B., talking like this will be our last time here. But I can see the fondness in his eyes as we make our way into town. Even the sound of the gravel road beneath his feet seems to bring him joy.  

Now that we are here, his decision to sell the Perlman villa is not sitting as easily as it had from our hotel room in France.

I have resigned myself, though.  In the end it is his choice, not mine.  If these are to be our last days in B. so be it, because they will not be _our_ last days.  

One night, several months after France but long before coming here, he’d rolled towards me, his fingers drifting sleepily down my chest.  “You know, it would be just as easy for me to be based out of New Haven next season as New York.”

“I should move some of my books then, hmm?  To make room for your piano?”

There will be moving trucks, come August.  Though he’ll keep his place in Manhattan for when we go to visit Adam at NYU.

My home will become his home.  His life will become mine. Our reunion is as simple as it is impossible.

I’d called him by my name again, last night.  21 years and still my heart had felt electrified by it.  That interchangeability, the swapping of names, conceived in a moment of love making by a young man who’d never come close to feeling the sort of affection I had found with Elio. It had symbolized our sameness, then.  Regardless of age, we had been two men, two Jews, two thinkers, two lovers falling so precipitously. Parity. Unity.

Then last night, his body lithe and agile on top of me, inspired by our idyllic setting, he’d asked for it again and I’d said it, letting it represent everything we had been.  Everything we have been allowed to become.

We sit on piazzetta, just as we had so many times during our first summer.  The coffee is strong. The newspaper filled with articles that I translate in my head.  I see him fall silent as mild panic settles around his eyes.  Moments later they are filled with tears.  My throat tightens. I hate seeing him conflicted.

“You ok?”  I ask. It’s breezy, false, like so many of my “Laters!” had been then.

He suggests we bring Adam and Jake here the following summer, his tacit way of saying he’s changed his mind about the sale.   I try to hide my own gladness.

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”   

“God, I hope so,” Elio says, seconds before kissing me.  Such public displays are still uncommon for us, but I cannot help but feel ageless when he looks at me like he is.

“Let’s go for a run before it gets to hot,” I say.

“Right now?”  He asks.

We have the rest of our lives, but I’m suddenly filled with an urgency to use up every second of another infinite Italian summer day with Elio by my side.  I had not valued those days enough the first time until it had been too late.  I won’t do the same again.

He looks up at me, hands already planted on the arms of the chair, ready to bound to his feet.  There is a teasing twist to his lips that I will worship until the day I die.

“Right now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO much for reading along. This was such a pleasure to revisit this world and this happy ending for Elio and Oliver.
> 
> Please follow on Tumblr for more fic updates and general CMBYN fangirling. xo


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